From time to time, probably more than we know, Springfield, Illinois, is confused with Springfield, Missouri (henceforth to be referred to as “That Other Springfield.”)

I believe people have ended up at the wrong airport due to this confusion. But what happened recently was worse.

It begins with a Red Robin restaurant in That Other Springfield. A couple of weeks ago, it was discovered that an employee there infected with hepatitis A may have exposed thousands of customers, could be as many as 5,000, to the disease. That’s bad enough, but then Time magazine reported on its website that this happened at the Red Robin here in Springfield, Illinois.

Time’s erroneous report was parroted by a variety of other websites. I found an article on the Monthly Prescribing Reference website that repeats the mistake and quotes CNN as the original source. I found CNN’s May 22 story on this, and they have it right.

But, as is the Web’s nature, many of those incorrect reports naming the Springfield, Illinois, Red Robin will live forever, right along with the mistaken story that Springfield, Illinois, is the third most dangerous city in the country.

This has been a major nightmare for That Other Springfield. Medical officials offered free vaccinations to Red Robin customers who may have been exposed. A local TV station reports that more than 2,300 doses of the hepatitis A vaccine were administered. This week, a Missouri couple filed a class-action lawsuit against Red Robin for damages incurred by the exposure. And I don’t believe anyone has even been identified as contracting the disease from the restaurant.

The Springfield News-Leader story on the lawsuit says it charges that the restaurant “owed a duty to exercise ordinary care for the safety of its customers” and that it breached that duty by allowing an employee who had hepatitis A to work at the restaurant, failing to screen employees for hepatitis A, failing to require employees to be inoculated, failing to discover the “dangerous risk of disease that existed on its property” and failing to warn customers of the risk.

The suit says people have “suffered pain as a result of the inoculations and they have suffered emotional distress.”

The problem in That Other Springfield resonated here because of the switch in identities on Time’s website. The Sangamon County Department of Public Health was given a heads-up by the state.

“We had one of our communicable disease staff that noticed (the mistake) in the magazine,” says Illinois Department of Public Health spokeswoman Melaney Arnold. “We alerted (Sangamon County) but did not receive any inquiries to the state health department. But we did notice it.”

Jim Stone, director of the county health department, says the alert was more of a precautionary measure just in case people here had seen the mistaken report and were frightened. Nobody called, which seems to mean not many people read Time magazine online.

Page 2 of 2 - It would be nice to know if the local Red Robin suffered any setbacks because of the mistaken news report. All I know for sure is that employees at the local Red Robin, which I happen to like (endless fries!), knew about the mistake.

It would be nice if I could just contact the restaurant’s local manager and ask if any customers here contacted him because they thought ours was the hepatitis restaurant. That would take, oh, about five minutes.

But that’s not the way things work in the corporate world. Red Robin’s a restaurant chain, and, as is usually the case with national chains, any questions from reporters on the local level must be answered at the national level.

Yeah, and good luck with that. I called three different numbers for media relations at Red Robin corporate and left messages at all three. Twice I had to leave voice mails. Once I reached an actual person, who promised she would check with the local restaurant and get back to me.

None of them did their job and answered my question. Red Robin, that’s something that really makes me sick.

Know of something quirky? Emotional? Funny? Inspiring? Dave Bakke is your man and his deadline is always near. Pitch your idea to him at dave.bakke@sj-r.com or at (217)788-1541. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. To read more, visit www.sj-r.com/bakke.